


'Till My Heart Stops Beating

by akaatsuki



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, despite the summary nobody actually dies so please read, kuro's mother appears for like (1) whole paragraph lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaatsuki/pseuds/akaatsuki
Summary: He was the lucky one. He wasalwaysthe lucky one. But as he stares emptily at the screen of Keito’s heart monitor, Kuro finds himself wishing yet again that he was just a littlelesslucky for once.





	'Till My Heart Stops Beating

There’s just no place in the world that’s quite like a hospital room. Kuro had decided this quite a long time ago, back when he was making a habit of visiting one three times a week—minimum. He’s never been to any place as cold as one, never been to any place as bleak and dreary as one, and he’s never found a floor that was  _ less  _ comfortable than the beds found in one. Everything about that place was unwelcoming and tormenting. 

Being a visitor was a lucky thing to be, for they could leave it whenever they wanted to; they could leave behind their gifts, say their goodbyes, and return to their warm homes with painted walls covered in picture frames. Now, it wasn’t  _ easy _ being a visitor, that’s for certain, but Kuro knows well that they’re lucky nonetheless, because the one lying in the bed is infinitely less fortunate. They’re forced to stare at white for hours and hours, forced to eat meals prepared with not a bit of tender love put into them, and do nothing but lie down and take up no more space than a coffin would provide for them. 

For all of his life, Kuro had been only a visitor—one of the lucky ones. Of course, every now and then (especially in his delinquent days) he would have to spent a night or two getting treated for some careless injury. But even then, he was lucky to have been able to walk out so soon with nothing weighing him down other than a cast or a sling, and maybe a row of stitches or two. 

He was the lucky one. He was  _ always  _ the lucky one. But as he stares emptily at the screen of Keito’s heart monitor, Kuro finds himself wishing yet again that he was just a little  _ less _ lucky for once. 

Glancing at his phone, he scowls when it tells him that his visiting hours are almost up—fifteen minutes left, and then he would have to walk home to his warm house and his lovely sister and his comfortable bed and leave Keito alone in the worst place in the world. Kuro doesn’t want to leave at all; if he could, he’d stay all night, all day, all week, all month—but visiting hours are visiting hours, and the nurses have a hard enough job as it is. 

It’s simply the harsh reality, he knows. He’s been through this once before and now once more, after all. 

Keito’s hand is cold in his own, completely limp and pliable in his grasp. Kuro never squeezed his hand; he only held it in his own with all the gentleness that he would if he were simply walking at his side. He was afraid to squeeze it—even if it was only a little—because with the way Keito looks at this moment, one would think that he would shatter under even the slightest bit of pressure. His gently closed eyes, his unmoving form, the barely visible rise and fall of his chest beneath the hospital blanket. Kuro knows that he hasn’t woken up for a week now, but he still holds onto the pitiful hope that maybe in the next ten minutes, his fingers will move against Kuro’s and he’ll open his eyes and see  _ him _ before he sees the hideous white walls of the room. 

The fresh bouquet that Kuro brought for him is the only splash of color in this damned room. It rests in the vase on the nearby table, replaced every three days so that there was not enough time between for even a single petal to wilt and fall. 

He wouldn’t ever be able to forgive himself if he allowed that to happen. 

Kuro realizes abruptly that it’s been several moments since he’d heard the last tone from Keito’s heart monitor. Shaking his head as if to dispel his thoughts, he looks up from Keito’s expressionless face and at the screen again, staring with intensity at the displayed image. 

He begins to count. 

One, two… 

_ Beep. _

One, two… 

_ Beep. _

He stands up all too quickly, throwing his free hand onto the call button connected to the wall beside Keito’s bed and pushing his palm down. 

It wasn’t normal. It  _ couldn’t _ be normal, and if the nurse who responds to his call tells him that it’s  _ normal _ for Keito to have a slowed heartbeat, then Kuro will tell her that he damn well  _ knows _ the rhythm of Keito’s heart, and this isn’t it. It’s too slow, the rhythm too familiar to him, so much so that it makes his hands shake. 

One, two… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three… 

_ Beep. _

A nurse should be here by now. Kuro may be starting to panic, but he knows that he’s not rushing the seconds that he’s counting at all. He knows that he’s right—it’s too slow. Nobody can tell him that he’s wrong. He’s been through this before. He  _ knows _ . 

One, two, three… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three… 

_ Beep. _

_ Can’t anyone do their fucking job right!? _

Kuro (regretfully) pulls his hand from Keito’s and rushes to the door, reaching for the handle as his own heartbeat speeds  _ up _ , adrenaline hot in his veins and anxiety weighing on his chest.  _ There’s still time, it’s fine, it’s just another episode, it’s normal for this to happen, all that matters is that someone comes in here and fixes it before _ —

The door is locked. 

… 

…The door is  _ locked? _

“Fuck,” he spits, feeling his blood run cold as he twists the handle again, beginning to bang his other palm on the surface of it when it still doesn’t fucking  _ open. _ “Fuck,  _ fuck,  _ open the fucking door!  _ Hey _ !”  

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

“Open the door! Why the—is anyone fucking  _ there _ !?  _ Open the door! HEY! _ ”

He was running out of time. He didn’t have the leisure to waste any more of it. Kuro throws his weight into twisting the handle (it doesn’t even  _ budge _ , what the  _ fuck? _ ), and when that doesn’t work, he resorts to trying to just  _ kick _ the damn thing down, because he’s  _ plenty _ strong enough to, and patient room doors are  _ hardly  _ sturdy enough to withstand him. 

But it doesn’t work. He tries over and over, struggling against it with growing severity, knowing well that he’s broken plenty of doors before, but this door won’t even creak beneath his boot, and he’s running out of time—

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

“God damn it—is anyone there!?” he shouts, far past controlling his volume, “can anyone hear me!? Someone—we need help, damn it!  _ Help! _ Someone,  _ anyone _ —!”

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three, four… 

_ Beep. _

Kuro realizes suddenly that he can’t remember what Keito’s voice sounds like. He can’t remember whether or not he calls him  _ Kuro _ or  _ Kiryuu _ ; he can’t remember how long they’ve been dating; he can’t remember where he took him for their first date; he can’t remember even when or where they first met. It’s as if Keito’s entire existence is slipping away from him and the rest of the world, like a steady stream of ink blotting out his life and everything to do with it, leaving nothing behind but a blotchy, unintelligible mess. 

One, two, three, four five… 

_ Beep. _

One, two, three, four five… 

_ Beep. _

He begins to forget why he came here. He can’t remember who he’s even  _ visiting _ . Why did he come here? Why did he leave the warmth and comfort of his own home to come to a place like this? 

As even this slips from his mind, he gradually stops hitting the door and finds no reason to be yelling out for an answer. Who is he trying to  _ save _ ? He knows that he’s supposed to be saving someone dear to him, but even a name fails to present itself in his memory. So, then, what does it matter? All he can remember right now is that he wants to go home. 

A long, blunt tone falls upon his ears. It hums throughout the room, incessant. Kuro can’t remember why he was so afraid of hearing it. 

He stares at the blank surface of the door for a few moments longer, as if trying to recollect what he was just doing. When he fails to do so, he slowly turns around towards the source of the tone that sounds like it’s growing louder by the second. His mother sits at the side of the hospital bed, her hands gently stroking the hair of whoever it was who just died beneath the blanket. Her skin is soft and glowing with youth, perfect and untouched by death’s terrible curse. Kuro can’t move his feet, and she looks towards him with sad, empty eyes, her lips trembling as if about to cry. Her mouth does not move, but Kuro can hear her faint, sorrowful voice— _ why didn’t you save him _ ? 

The room plunges into darkness before he has the time to scream. The floor beneath him is suddenly pulled away and now he’s falling, falling to some unfathomable depths, and as the wind howls in his ears, someone’s name blossoms within his memory—

Kuro lurches upright from where he’d been lying upon his pillow. His skin feels clammy and wet, and his heart hammers in his chest as he gasps for air. His knuckles pale as he grips the blanket, eyes blown wide but unable to see anything in the thick darkness of the room.  _ Where is he? No, no, more importantly, where is _ —

“…Kuro?”

His breathing still heavy and frantic and his fingers still trembling wildly in horror, Kuro turns his head to his left to look in the direction of the soft voice. He still can’t see anything in the darkness, but he winces involuntarily when a gentle hand reaches out, blindly, to touch his arm. 

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?” 

Kuro doesn’t process what was said to him. Instead, all he can notice is how lovely that voice is; how sweetly it falls upon his ears and soothes him from his turmoil, and how incredible it feels to fall in love yet again. Unconsciously, he moves forward and reaches out, pulling the person beside him as close to himself as he can manage despite the alarmed gasp that he hears upon doing so. He embraces the other tightly, his chilled skin thawing from the warmth, and he realizes that for the first time in a  _ long _ time, he can feel hot tears wetting his face. That beloved person is tense against him, his breaths uneven and anxious, having been so rudely awakened by the implication that something was horribly, terribly wrong. 

“It’s fine,” Kuro chokes out, his voice hoarse with slumber and raw emotion. “It’s fine, you’re fine—I’ve got ya now, n’ I won’t let go, I swear I won’t let anythin’ hurt ya, I promise—” 

“Kuro,  _ please _ ,” Keito whispers against him, “you’re not making any sense.”

Keito’s hands are balled into fists against the other’s chest as he finds himself completely and utterly terrified by the fact that Kuro is not only so uncharacteristically panicked, but that he’s  _ crying _ . Keito can hear it in his voice, he can feel Kuro shaking against him, and he’s really, actually  _ crying _ ; Keito doesn’t even think he’s ever seen Kuro come even  _ close _ to it before. And so, of  _ course _ he’s so unnerved by the fact that he was woken up at what must be past three in the morning to witness it. Either the world was ending as he knew it, or… 

“…Did you have a nightmare?” he asks softly, and, with a quite a bit of effort, manages to move his arms so that he can bring his hands upwards to take a gentle hold of Kuro’s face. The wetness that paints his fingers erases any possible doubt he could have had that Kuro was really and truly crying. 

Kuro is silent at first, the sound of their breathing the only thing that fills the void of the room while he collects himself. He leans into Keito’s touch until he can feel the heat of his forehead against the other’s, and he can feel the other’s breath upon his lips. He exhales shakily, releasing some of the tension wound in his shoulders. 

“…Yeah,” he murmurs, loosening his grasp upon Keito just a bit upon realizing how tightly he’d been holding him. “It was…a nightmare. That’s all it was. God—thank  _ god _ it was—I don’t know what I would’a—” 

Keito pulls him into a firm kiss, and Kuro supposes that maybe it was better for him not to recall the wretched experience. Maybe it was better, after all, for him to just forget about it until morning came and let Keito get back to sleep—it must be an ungodly hour, after all, and he knows that the other has a long day ahead of him as always. He lingers upon their kiss as long as he can manage to, brushing Keito’s hair out of his way with his fingertips so that he can brush his lips along the softness of his cheek.  _ There’s no way that I can be this lucky _ , he thinks absently to himself, placing one of his palms over the back of Keito’s hand and clasping it gently, savoring every curve and edge of the other’s slender fingers. 

“Wait,” Keito whispers to him when Kuro finally pulls away to let Keito go back to bed, reaching out to grab onto Kuro’s wrist. “Let me stay with you, Kuro. You need me.” 

Kuro thinks about this for a moment, staring at where he assumes Keito must be in the darkness. He smiles despite himself, wiping away the lingering tears with the back of the hand that Keito wasn’t holding so tightly onto. He is pleasantly surprised to find that his hands aren’t shaking anymore. 

“I  _ always  _ need ya,” he replies, and Keito involuntarily huffs a soft chuckle when he can  _ hear _ the grin in Kuro’s voice. Kuro pulls Keito against him again, lying down against his pillow once more, one arm hooking around Keito’s waist while his other hand remained snug in Keito’s grasp. Keito presses one last kiss to Kuro’s lips before deciding that he probably won’t be able to fall back asleep if he does any more. 

“I need ya now, and I’ll need ya tomorrow, and I’ll need ya every day for the rest of my life,” Kuro says with certainty, and if Keito weren’t so tired, he’d absolutely scold him for saying something that sounded like a premature wedding vow. 

He settles for “that’s wonderful,” instead, resting his head upon Kuro’s shoulder and nestling a bit further against the base of his neck. Keito finds that it’s a lot easier for him to cuddle up to Kuro like this when it’s too dark for Kuro to actually  _ see _ him. The rhythmic sound of Kuro’s heartbeat against him already makes him feel too tired to keep his eyelids open any longer. 

“Hey,” Kuro murmurs, finally relaxed against the mattress beneath him. “I love ya.” 

Keito gently squeezes Kuro’s hand, suddenly finding himself incredibly excited to wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, as well. 

“I love you, too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this whole thing in 2 hours and didnt go back and revise it at all because it's 10 PM on a school night and im crying and i cant believe this giant bag of pretzel sticks only cost me 99 cents


End file.
